Chapter 389 - The Greatest Fear, Which Is To Not Be Enough

Alright! It's a Mom!Raika chapter! Wheeee! Plus some hints that we have a few things cooking. I'm sure no one's noticed how Dink hasn't been mentioned in a while... or the Craft as an independent thing... surely nothing will come of this...

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“Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.”

― Debra Ginsberg 

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“I still think you’re doing well, Master,” Jin says from where he’s sitting, working on a fresh carving. 

“That’s because you aim low, my precious martial son, and crave little in the ways of annihilation and domination. And, quite frankly, are way healthier than me. I, on the other hand, am profoundly a mess, and crave little more than further improvement.”

He gives a little glare at that, the statement incredibly clear with just his eyes, but she just grins, pretending she’s joking so she can pretend to be sincere. 

“I don’t deny that I’m doing well,” she says instead of addressing it. “The fact that we won last time is due to that, that and the careful planning. But I’m not always going to have time to plan, and what’s more, having more options to plan with is almost always a net positive. The city’s going to march with us, at least in part, and that’s worth its weight in gold, but I’m not going to neglect my fundamentals. There’s plenty that we can work on in the meantime.”

She looks down at the table in front of her, watching the series of different tools that have been lain out along it. 

On one side, off to the right, is the Gun made of Pain. Fused to her Dao and her Death, it’s already recovered from its shattered state. It regrows a little differently each time, but always functional, always holding onto the mechanisms of a proper, long-range, single-shot rifle. Bone-white wood, grown almost like coral, wrapped around a barrel and internal mechanisms of Blacksteel and Radiant Metal- which never seems to grow into more than it started as, but also never seems to diminish, in spite of the damage. 

Beside it, a series of diagrams and leather scrolls have been lain out, some of them the notes she’s made on general array-work, some of them active blueprints for more complex amalgamations. Her work on her “hex-beasts”, Echo-flesh and corpse-meat reanimated into living weapons, is represented here, alongside the work she, Li Shu and Jin have done on portals, the infection of corpsewood trees, and more, the really high-end shit. Most of it can definitely still be improved, and she has tons of runes and arrays she hasn’t mastered yet. Still, with her focus on unconventional tactics, they’ve been more of a priority, leaving some gaps in her education.

To the left of that, are the notes she’s made relating to her Death. Diagrams of her flowers, a long, detailed list of the Deaths that each one is tied to, the ways she’s been able to use them to fuel herself. Notes on her anchor-needles, on the ways that she’s been able to rebuild her body, on as exact of a set of specifications as she can make about how she can “manifest” those Deaths into reality.

Last but certainly not least, there is a currently very lethargic Gu beetle, crouched on the far end of the table. Beetle stands beside her, carefully tending to her, bringing little bits of whatever stray chunk of materials has caught his eye to make a little nest for her. Considering his cultivation level, his attentions have left several pieces of furniture and walls in the chamber with missing pieces and torn-open areas. 

The four pillars of her current strength. Death, which manifests into reality and provides her with continued Unlife; Arrays, which provide the tools to multiply force and grant new avenues of opportunity; The Gun made of Pain, representative of her Dao and her use of machinery; and her poorly-understood trump cards, her Gu, of which she has one still pickling and unhatched. 

For someone who’s been a Bishop for… what, a few months? At most? She’s not sure exactly of how much time has passed, but a lot less than a year. And she’s gained / relearned a way to access Dao, gotten some very basic and powerful arrays and techniques with it, Death magics to replace cultivation and eldritch flesh-o-mancy, and the Gu. Which are… a completely deranged experiment built on very solid foundations of knowledge and such, and are working surprisingly well. 

Case in point- the table on the far left side has begun to droop as the Gu beetle’s nest is made on it, not from its weight, but from the sheer miasma it’s emanating on contact. Not through the air, obviously, which would make it impossible to even keep in the room, but on contact, its properties emanate from it, leaking into their surroundings. The inanimate stone of the table is being quite literally poisoned, melted, altered, to the point that it’s starting to melt. 

It’s not quite Dao… but it’s close. Its potency is profound enough to imply at Dao, which is rare enough on its own, and really points to how fucking scary Bishop Tonura Eneru’s centipede-construct things must be to have apparently been only inconvenienced about it. And all it took was…

Well. The Deaths of a few hundred people and a few dozen of Raika, enchanted arrays designed completely experimentally, and a long, long time inside the actual guts of an unliving Bishop. So not nothing. But also not that much!

“I think that if you get too focused again, Master, you’ll end up hurting yourself. We… did talk about this.”

She smiles at Jin, turning with a roll of her eyes. “I know, kid. I’m not trying to slip into old habits. I just… more options are good. And I’m hitting a bit of a bottleneck anyways. Need to figure out what I’m going to focus on, and what direction I’m taking. You’ve got your focuses, I need to work on mine, that’s all.”

“Some Master you are,” Rai Jin says, but she can hear the smile in his voice. “Lagging behind her disciple in disciplines.”

She tosses a chunk of bone, no larger than a cube of dice, over at his head, scoring against his forehead without needing to look. He gives a yelp of surprise, but doesn’t retaliate, which only proves that he’s truly still learning. 

“I happen to have vaster and more complex challenges than you, young disciple! It’s the privilege and burden of a master to continue learning and developing, lest they find themselves unable to teach their idiot juniors in need of education.

“Besides, I get bored easily. If I’m not moving forward, I’m not doing it right- having a slower pace doesn’t change that fact.”

“Pretty sure you’re going to run into another Truth like that, Master. And you told me yourself that gaining the wrong one can only hurt you, even if it makes your stronger.”

She goes to roll her eyes again (metaphorically, there are still only flowers in her sockets), but stops. That… that’s pretty good advice. She should know. She said it herself. She can be pretty wise when she’s not trying to be. Which… hey, glad that the kid has that. 

“You’re right. That’s fair. But it’s more true than not. And either way, I am, in fact, at a bottleneck. Mortaria and New Inquisum both are probably going to put up a harder fight than this place, if only because they don’t seem to have much of a civilian population as far as I can tell. Either I need to unbottle my next Gu early, so I can figure out what it does now rather than in the field, but lose out on its potential potency if I let it sit for longer, or I need to improve another skill, or…”

He looks up from his carving, tilting his head. “Or what? What else is there?”

She looks back at him, and he freezes.

“No. No no no. Master, no. You’ve already got too many things to pursue, you cannot spend time finding another one. I- you haven’t even trained me to the Core Formation realm yet! And- and you haven’t got many Deaths right now, and your efficiency with them is terrible, and I-”

She laughs, waving a hand at him. “Relax. I’ll run it by you and Li Shu at least before I go ahead with it, alright? Take a breath, kid, I’m not trying to figure out a whole new thing right this second.”

But then again…

No. Later. She has a plan for what she intends to add to her arsenal next, and it can come after she works on what she currently has.

Once she’s made her decision, she adds to it the further decision to sigh, dead lungs going through the motions as a signal to others more than herself. It’s easy, in the end, to pick something, and she was hesitating mostly due to the fact that it’s her least favorite of all the things on the table in front of her.

She picks up the closest and lightest scroll from the table, opening it to the notations she has about arrays and runic formations once again. 

“Alright. I’m thinking… if we can do a general upgrade on the puppet enchantments, and work some magic on the Gun, then we’ll be in a better spot. That, plus figuring out some real, actual ‘techniques’ to work my Death through, and then see if I can’t replicate the Gun or make more weapons like it, and then… maybe I find time to make some more Gu? But… shit, it’s going to be tough. I need all the Death I have right now, and I still have one stored. And plus, I’m pretty sure the one that’s out is pregnant, so who knows what the hells that’ll do.”

She hears the sound of clattering as Jin drops the statue he was carving. In a blink, she’s turn to face him, spreading her awareness throughout the room, ready to defend-

“What do you mean pregnant?” he asks, his eyes wide. “It- it’s a beetle! Like, a poisonous Death beetle! How-”

His eyes dart from her to the beetle on the table, which is currently being swaddled in a nest of ripped-free chunks of the room, and Beetle, whose shell looks a teensy bit shinier and maybe a little bit melted.

“Wait, did they fuck?”

“Oh, good, you know about that already. Saves me some of the conversation.”

He looks at her, exasperated. “I didn’t know they could have kids!”

“Me neither, but it’s either that or Beetle is way more doting of a mate than I expected, and I had high hopes for the little guy already. And we’ll see if it comes to anything, anyways. The Gu are… kinda-sorta an evolution type deal, built on Bestial Cultivation, but I frankly do not know what that means for… its? Her? Ability to lay eggs. But also, how did you think poisonous beetles reproduced? They’re all over the place in the wild.”

“Well… I don’t know, I never really thought about it! It hasn’t exactly come up before!”

“Good, and it shouldn’t. You’re a few years too young to be doing that sort of thing, and the number of people you could be doing it with and have it not be weird is incredibly limited at the moment.”

“Wha- I- I don’t-”

“See? She asks, waving a hand at him. “All this! Anyone that gets so easily flustered at the mere mention of the word is someone that still has some growing up to do. As your Master, I am proclaiming that you’re not to even think about your romance until you’re into the Nascent Soul realm.”

“WHAT?”

“Oh?” she says, still “focused” on her array diagrams, reviewing and adding a few touches here and there. It’s honestly more relaxing to multitask than to focus wholly on a single subject. “Why such a reaction, Rai Jin? Did you have your eyes already set on someone?”

“I- no!” he says, the pout self-evident from his tone. For all that he’s grown fast, she did find him as a literal child, and he’s only now reaching the point of adolescence. “I just- that’s only going to happen in like twenty years or something! There’s a whole realm! And you told me that it takes a long time! What if before that, I find somebody? I thought it’s important to follow your heart!”

“Hearts can be misleading,” Raika replies, adding a few lines to a diagram. “You literally just chastised me about that, kid.”

“Well I-”

“Ah! Nope! Nascent Soul realm only. Any lower and I forbid it. Plus, considering you, you’ll have people swarming over you in no time. Good diet, conscientious, has hobbies, exceptional cultivation- you’ll be a stunner before you know it.”

He seems like he’s going to yell something or protest, but, perhaps catching on to her game or just annoyed by the whole conversation, he just grumbles instead, picking up his statue and brushing off a bit of debris from Beetle’s antics off its black frame. He gets up, bringing it and some of his carving tools over towards another, nearby table, setting up beside her.

The room, in spite of Beetle’s destructive tendencies, is still relatively intact, its design principles clear. The Valdir clan’s architectural preferences about, with dark reds dominating much of the space between bits of the underlying bone, but the luxury of the decorations and furniture don’t cover up the fact that it’s a workshop, first and foremost. The far side of it, closest to an exterior wall, is taken up entirely by the massive ritual circle at its center, pieces of it drawn in ornate chalks that can be used to remold it as needed, while at the opposite end, Raika and Jin use some of the many available desks and workstations. Several tables have been lain out, some more than large enough to lay a body on, and a series of materials have been presented here, mostly gifted by those trying to curry favor.

Maybe Li Shu or Kai Valdir are taking care of that. She couldn’t be bothered to learn all the names, and most of the materials are too potent for her to use just yet.

“I don’t know how to feel when you talk like that, Master.”

She blinks, briefly brought out of her reverie as she looks up from where she’s adding a few more notes on theoretics. “Hmm? Like what?”

“Like… you sometimes seem like you only see a single step ahead, and at other times, you talk as if you are completely confident about how things will be in a few years time. It… makes me wonder if you’re lying about the second part. As if you’re just saying it to be kind, or to get me to stop talking.”

Raika inhales, long and slow, before letting the air back out. The act, purely meditative at this point, fills the silence after his statement, leaving a bit of quiet, a bit of space for the topic. She lets the silence add its weight to her next words, choosing them carefully.

“I don’t intend to minimize you, or your concerns, kid. You’re… I’m a bit surprised that you don’t realize it, but it makes sense. You don’t really have anyone to compare yourself to. But it took me almost twenty years to get into the Core Formation realm, and I spent most of that training in a controlled environment. You’ve got good resources, ones suited to you, and that’s either luck or fate or whatever you want to call it, but more than that, you’re talented. You’re incredibly good at seeing yourself, at understanding what you want and what you believe and forming it, and that means that you’re growing faster than any cultivator I ever met back in the Empire. It’ll slow as you get up there, sure, but you’re a genuine prodigy. And not to diminish the effects of being homeless, but it’s been a few years since you started eating right, and it’s made a difference. I have absolute certainty that you’re going to grow up into someone really special, and I am going to make absolutely certain that it happens, as best I can.

“But you’re good, kid. You’re special, and not just because you’re lucky. I see you. You’re always working, always caring, always thinking. You know there’s more to learn, more to do, so you do it, and learn it, and… yeah. It’s… I don’t know. It’s a parent’s dream that their kid be better than they are, have a better life. I can’t say I’ve lived up to the latter, but compared to who I was at your age, you’ve succeeded already at the first part.”

She turns her senses away from him. Without eyes, with muted corpse-nerves, her supernatural perception is her main source of vision, but she retracts it to just the table in front of her, where she slowly draws another set of potential combinations for her arrays to try later. 

Is that weakness? That showing vulnerability is enough to get her to turn aside, force her focus into a closer space? 

She’s not sure. It feels alright. Mostly. And it is sincerity, absolutely. She means every word. That’s part of why it’s so fucking stressful to say. 

A small body, covered in the scent of cultivation, of smoke and whispers and calm, wraps its arms around her.

She can’t feel it. The body beneath the embrace is cold, its nerves dead, its ability to experience sensation crippled.

She feels it more strongly than anything her Death-senses could ever tell her.

Slowly, she raises a stiff, corpse-flesh limb to wrap around her kid, patting him on the shoulder.

“You’re alright, kid. You’re alright.”

She keeps her senses turned away. Just in case he’s crying. So that he can have privacy, and for no other reason. 

“So! I figure shit got pretty crazy back during the siege. Make any big memories?”

Slowly, Jin pulls back, and she hears him pick up the statue he was carving again. 

“Yeah, actually. I managed to clear out a whole building of people, this one time. And actually, when your big many-armed thing was running around, I had to duck through a bunch of falling rocks, and I managed to use the shadows in a really cool way, where…”

She listens as he talks, letting the words horrify her and amaze her in equal measure. Every new scenario, enacted by her, every new horror, her fault- but every victory, every accomplishment, absolutely real. And, alongside him, she keeps refining her work, focused by the sound of his voice.